Securities (e.g., stocks, bonds, notes, futures, bills, options, etc.) have been sold to the general public for many years. Companies and other entities that offer their securities in this manner are typically known as publicly traded. In recent years, publicly traded companies have increasingly faced litigation with regard to their accounting and business practices and have come under greater scrutiny by regulatory agencies. The regulator, the investor, the issuer and even external auditors have all been affected by this trend.
Various systems have been employed to gather data on publicly traded companies and public securities trades that take place. In fact, forensic accounting is focused in part, on gathering a large amount of historical data relating to such practices. Large amounts of data relating to various securities trades have been gathered and compiled by regulatory agencies, investors and securities issuers for various reasons.
One area of data gathering however that has been largely ignored is the gathering of data relating to the individual shareholder of securities and/or the custodians thereof rather than only for instance, data relating to institutional investors or data relating to the trades themselves. In the litigious environment in which we exist, enforcement actions, civil suits, audits, as well as activities designed to prevent accounting and trading abuses or even outright fraud can be enhanced by looking beyond the numbers and gathering data relating to the shareholders themselves. Abuses such as insider trading and compliance issues may be more effectively monitored employing such information. Still further, securities issuers may be able to assist and/or monitor investor relations firms as well as investment bankers with this type of information.
In addition to assisting the above-listed agencies and/or groups, gathering and manipulating of shareholder and/or custodian data can also provide a significant future marketing tool for the securities issuer, providing detailed information on ownership make-up of the publicly traded company.
It should be noted, however, that the collection and analysis of shareholder data has not been completely ignored. For example, one reference that is directed to the gathering of shareholder data, U.S. Published Patent Application No. 2002/0120544 (“the '544 application”) discloses the collection and analysis of certain shareholder data including for instance, geographic location of shareholder, familiar relationships between shareholders, relationships between shareholders and the companies in which they hold shares, the number of shares held, the length of time shares are held by shareholders, etc. This type if information is gathered in order to evaluate the desirability of buying or selling shares in particular companies (i.e., as an investment analysis tool for potential or current investors).
However, the '544 application fails to teach or suggest in any way the collection and analysis of shareholder information or data for custody and compliance purposes, for allowing the publicly traded company to evaluate its shareholders and market makers so as to, for example, better target potential future shareholders, for forensic accounting purposes, or for the plethora of other purposes that may be useful to parties other than simply potential or current investors. The '544 application also fails to teach or suggest gathering information or data on individual shareholders or share custodians of a publicly traded company at different points in time, comparing the information or data from different point in time, and providing analysis of changes based on the comparison.
Accordingly, what is desired then is a system and method that gathers and manipulates shareholder and/or custodial information or data, and which, based upon the information or data, checks for compliance issues, which gathers information or data relating to an individual shareholder for checking compliance issues, which gathers information or data relating to an individual shareholder for processing into a form that is useful to the processor, which gathers and manipulates information or data relating to an individual shareholder for future marketing of shares, which gathers information or data relating to an individual shareholder for assisting and/or monitoring the performance of investor relations firms and/or investment bankers, among other entities, and which gathers information concerning the custodians of shareholders' shares in each of the afore-mentioned instances.